Lost to Addiction: 'He just wouldn't stop'

Sunday

Apr 10, 2016 at 2:00 AMApr 10, 2016 at 7:10 AM

Staff Reporter

In a series called Lost to Addiction, the Times profiles a Cape Codder who has died from opiate abuse. In the past 15 years, more than 300 people from the Cape and Islands have died of opiate overdoses.

SANDWICH — The smell of flowers from a funeral bouquet filled the air and two posters replete with snapshots were propped against a window in the living room.

The death of Peter “Pete” O’Connell from a drug overdose lingered in his childhood home, the pain, emotion and exhaustion still raw for his mother, Dianne, 61, his father, Jeffrey, 62, and his brother, Christopher “Kit” O’Connell, 29.

“I feel like my heart has been ripped out of me,” Dianne said. “I don’t know what, if anything, will ever fill that void.”

His death came just 10 days after Peter’s 25th birthday, but the prospect of a lethal overdose loomed since his addiction took hold as a teenager. He had 12 separate stints in rehabilitation facilities over six years and several near-fatal overdoses, including one that had him in a coma for 10 days.

- More profiles of Cape Codders who have lost their lives to drug overdoses

Every text message, every phone call, every return home was filled with apprehension.

“The past eight years have been unbelievable, up and down, up and down all the time. Always worried about him,” said Jeffrey, who has lived in Texas since he and Dianne divorced six years ago. “Every time Dianne called me, I’d say, `Oh Jesus, what now?’ I always was worried.”

On March 24, Dianne returned home from a day at work. Peter had been home from his landscaping job recovering from surgery to remove an ingrown toenail.

“Idle time was not good for him,” she said.

She called out to him. No answer. She went upstairs to find him sprawled on the floor unconscious. She had prepared for this very moment. She had taken a first-aid course and had Narcan, the drug that can reverse a heroin overdose, in the house.

“He was blue,” she said. She began compressions, blew air into his lungs, dialed 911. She couldn’t feel a pulse.

“They were here fast,” Dianne said. “They shocked him. He was gone.”

There is calmness to her voice that belies the horror. “Just unbelievable,” she said in a soft whisper. “I was too late.”

The family suspects Peter died from an overdose of heroin laced with fentanyl, a powerful painkiller.

“He just wouldn’t stop. He just wouldn’t stop,” said Jeffrey, who kept his son alive until rescue crews arrived during another overdose while Peter was living with him in Texas.

Peter got his first prescription for Percocet as a 14-year-old after he dislocated his hip in a snowboarding crash at Stowe Mountain in Vermont.

“You get a taste of it, it’s something you like, it makes you feel all right, so you stick with that feeling,” Kit said. “Then you’re chasing it and before too long you’re hooked on it.”

It was easy for a teen to get drugs like Percocet in Sandwich at the time, particularly at Sandwich High School, where he and his brother graduated four years apart, Kit said. His parents knew Peter was smoking marijuana, but had no idea he was also getting high on prescription drugs.

That hip injury kept Peter from playing high school lacrosse that spring and, ultimately, not playing that spring cost him a shot at making the team the next year, his mother said.

Not a good mix for a teen already struggling with confidence. “He wasn’t really comfortable in his skin, he was a quiet type of kid, not a good student, struggled with school,” Jeffrey said. “He struggled with associations with girls, he was pretty shy. I think the drugs helped kind of release all that, made him feel more comfortable, more powerful.”

Peter graduated from Sandwich High in 2009 and attended Cape Cod Community College. Meanwhile, his addiction to opioids took hold, with the first time he was hospitalized coming at 20 years old.

Following the recommendation of a social worker, Peter was sent to a recovery program in Florida, where it proved too easy for him to get drugs. He was in and out of treatment programs too quickly, his parents said, because insurance wouldn’t pay for longer stays.

“There isn’t enough long-term care,” Dianne said. “It’s 30, 60 or 90 days. If you’re an opioid addict, you really need more time for the brain to repair itself. He just couldn’t get that time. Either insurance didn’t cover it or there weren’t openings for him.”

Each time Peter would relapse, he could never explain exactly what happened to him. The family tried Texas facilities and Massachusetts ones, but none could get through to him fully.

“He would say, 'I promise, I never will again. I promise, Mom. I want to be clean. I don’t like this life.’” Dianne said. “He would cry. He hated it, hated it. The control it had over his life. He would say, 'I feel like I can’t move on.'”

They had hoped to try Vivitrol, an injection that blocks opiate receptors to the brain and cools cravings, but Peter had not been clean long enough to do it.

Still, there were glimpses of that kid who loved snowboarding, who loved fishing off the family’s boat, who loved biking. He had made plans to join his brother in Park City, Utah, where Kit is a snowboard instructor, once he had enough money saved. Kit hoped to get him involved in one of the many bike shops around the mountains where he could pursue his passion for the outdoors and cycling, removed from the temptation of heroin.

But, in the end, the drugs, the pursuit of that high, overcame him.

“It’s just a bummer,” Kit said. “Just not having him around.”

By speaking out, the O’Connells are hopeful they can make a difference in what is a national epidemic of opiate abuse. They urge parents to watch for the warning signs and for government to do more to make long-term treatment available and affordable.

“Start when you sense things are going wrong, they’re hanging out with the wrong kids or starting to smoke pot,” Jeffrey said. “Start early. Education is important here.”

Dianne urges families to join groups like Al-Anon to help them cope. "It's a disease of the family, as well," she said. "It really takes a toll."

The O’Connells are overwhelmed by the outpouring of support in the community. So many parents saying this could have easily been them.

“Everyone has said to us, you did everything you could do,” Dianne said. “There’s nothing else, other than putting him in a cage or something. It’s terrible.”

— Follow George Brennan on Twitter: @gpb227.

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